> If obituary websites keep their "death databases", it may be even easier in the future.
They don't. This is why the government keeps these records for as long as possible (well over a century, in some cases, thanks to microfiche). Even if the home town dries up and blows away, the county keeps on, and usually takes over the records of lost towns, villages, etc., as part of any disencorporation process.
Most suburbs aren't that sort of community either - they're places people go to sleep after working too many hours in another suburb or city.
Except that suburbanites put their obits in the main city paper (or papers - still a few cities with two majors, for various reasons), not in the local upgraded PennySaver. And yes, I write from experience.
As far as obits and young/transient cities go, I doubt that the survivors of the transients put obits in the (frex) SF paper, but instead put them in their home town papers, if anywhere.
I think the only places where tightly knit communities would still want that sort of service are mostly small towns
Or places that used to attract people, like Detroit or Pittsburgh, where there is still a core of non-movers who act as contact points for those who left.
It seems like the "insider" scenario could easily be mitigated by background checks and the like. It works for the Intelligence community.
Sure, just ask John Walker, or any of the Cambridge Circle, how well that worked. I am sure the Russians have their own set of famous traitors in high places (a son in law of Nikita Khrushchev's, for one that I recall). And that was where the penalty for violating intellectual property was potentially execution after unknown levels of torture, which I doubt that Monsanto, or m999's statistical software company, could get away with too often.
As I read the summary, the 12% who opted out of conveying ownership of their immortal soul to the store were paid 5 pounds. So, the British have to PAY SOMEONE to take their souls, like they do garbage?
> Some schools teach creationism. Some teach actual theology.
Not to mention that there have been PhDs issued for Magic - not stage magic, but the Merlin kind. As part of Anthropology, it makes as much sense as teaching inheritance practices among Bedouin or Tuaregs, or warring among the Dani of New Guinea. Clearly, studying how UFOs are seen, how their belief are propagated, etc., makes perfect sense. UFO Studies are also like Xenobiology or Cryptobiology (both taught at the graduate level, IIRC), in that they are fields of study that have yet to demonstrate that their objects of study really exist.
OTOH, teaching UFOs as actual things about which you can make true statements, rather than opinions. is clearly nonsense. The Blue alien with the ray gun is rather insistent that I make that perfectly clear.
Regardless of what the zoologists name them, they will always be fruit flies to people with them in their kitchens, just as Buffalo Bill will not be renamed Bison Bill because the Plains Buffalo is "really" a bison, instead.
OTOH, the people who know them as Drosophila melanogaster probably could care less that they are common kitchen pests. Or, for zoologists who cook at home, that the things flying around the kitchen were Drosophila melanogaster as opposed to some related species, or even something of a related genus, when they are trying to get them out of their kitchens.
> Face it: We could never have 9 planets now. It would be 15 and rising (= a mess) or 8 forever.
What is wrong with 15 planets? There were a number of naming schemes already proposed for trans-Plutonic/trans-Neptunic planets out to at least 13 as far back as the 1960s. That there should be 8 forever, especially if something really big shows up out there, is more ridiculous. Perhaps we should rename Uranus and Neptune as Trans-Saturnic Objects and go back to the Ptolomeic list (sans Sun and Moon)?
I suppose you would have had problems with naming trans-Plutonium semi-stable nuclei as "elements" because 95 and rising is a mess, as well?
They did. The last aurochs (the most probable wild ancestor of domestic cattle) died during the Thirty Years War when the nobility's hunting preserves were overrun by various (hungry) armies.
> but i have to wonder how much of their capacity goes unused even while they charge people
Obviously, just as much as they need to survive during the peak usage periods, or they would lower the price slightly and introduce new features to waste more MBs. Their purpose is to fool you into throwing money at them without wasting their time handling porn or coverage complaints, after all, not to leave your money in your investments (or pockets, at least).
You forgot that the only think standing in the way of the total triumph of (x:: x in {GNU/Linux|Linux|BeOS|etc}) is Apple's blocking of the critical path. Otherwise, (said x) would be challenging the Wintel monopoly, and destined to take the lead in but a year or two, as Steve Ballmer can only throw chairs and the sheeple would realize that they all were totally wrong in everything in question, and would convert en mass to (said x).
Or is that covered by your #8?
> Microsoft and Microsoft users were never even talked about this way.
No, worse. Microsoft hate was never at the "would be evil if only..." stage, but started at "is evil" and went down from there.
OTOH, there were no latents covering their own sexual confusion fears by accusing Microsoft users of being homosexuals, instead, so maybe it balances out.
Oh my god, I just realize that Will Smith will be playing the president in the sequel! His character saved the planet and is now old enough to be President of the U.S.A. He and Bill Pullman will be good friends, but President Hiller is not popular despite the heroics from his younger days. Then we get invaded and he's popular again.
Sometimes I wonder why I still write code.
Because you cannot come up with a decent sequel idea (decent in the business sense, at least) to save your life? Seriously, that is almost the plot of each succeeding season of 24, so how difficult was that?
Now back to the topic: imagine steam punk style applied to a hearing aid device, with some clunky gears, smoke and illumination, probably would look like a walking bulldozer.
What is so un-steam punk about a simple Victorian ear trumpet?
Your example code is cute, except that the inheritance system is more like Common LISP (inheritance from an instance) rather than C++ (inheritance from a Platonic Ideal of the class). Please rewrite appropriately.
First, your link to the explanation of the X0 system is broken.
Second, I don't know for certain, but I think that the sex determination function is handled like Common Lisp inheritance (inherited from an instance, not an abstraction like a class definition, especially of a root class) rather than C++, Java, C#, etc. Evidently, said function was replaced in the mammalian line, just as color vision was (birds and reptiles have four primary colors, most mammals have only two, and pro-simians and primates have three (in general in all cases - at one company where I worked had about 1/4 male color-blindness).
The Dark Sky Mystery to which OP refers is the question that why, if the Universe is infinite, is the night sky dark, since everywhere that one looks one should eventually run into a star, given a random distribution. It ignores the effect of dust absorbing light, that the Universe THAT WE CAN SEE is rather less than infinite (even if one assumes an infinite Universe), and that stars are not distributed randomly since most are in galaxies and galactic clusters (and thus end to clump together, instead of spread apart).
Nice steal from Niven's "Man Of Steel, Woman Of Kleenex" article. However, the answer is obviously to move LL (all Superman's girlfriends had those initials) to an area receiving light like that of a red sun, which reduces Kryptonians to human-like levels. And it doesn't have any bad effects, since Kryptonians evolved in that light; Kal-El himself was born there, for that matter.
Seriously. . . What South American country is the U.S. about to bomb back into the Slave Trade which the Powers That Be are desperate we should fail to notice?
I think that you need to repost the last sentence, possibly with a link to what you are trying to refer. It looks like something was eaten by the system.
> (Although one could argue the military and government are the same thing.)
No, but it would be pretty hard to argue that the military is not a proper subset of the government.
However, in any case, since they have been exposed, the Secretary will disavow an knowledge of their actions. Good luck, Mister (Chinese equivalent of Briggs, Hand, or Phelps).
> So I think that much of the targeted information is coming via credit-reporting agencies.
Obviously, you also do not respond to charities received in the mail. My family used to do this, occasionally, and my parents are still inundated, even though they stopped responding after my father retired, over a decade ago.
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> If obituary websites keep their "death databases", it may be even easier in the future.
They don't. This is why the government keeps these records for as long as possible (well over a century, in some cases, thanks to microfiche). Even if the home town dries up and blows away, the county keeps on, and usually takes over the records of lost towns, villages, etc., as part of any disencorporation process.
Except that suburbanites put their obits in the main city paper (or papers - still a few cities with two majors, for various reasons), not in the local upgraded PennySaver. And yes, I write from experience.
As far as obits and young/transient cities go, I doubt that the survivors of the transients put obits in the (frex) SF paper, but instead put them in their home town papers, if anywhere.
Or places that used to attract people, like Detroit or Pittsburgh, where there is still a core of non-movers who act as contact points for those who left.
Sure, just ask John Walker, or any of the Cambridge Circle, how well that worked. I am sure the Russians have their own set of famous traitors in high places (a son in law of Nikita Khrushchev's, for one that I recall). And that was where the penalty for violating intellectual property was potentially execution after unknown levels of torture, which I doubt that Monsanto, or m999's statistical software company, could get away with too often.
Are the store owners all Irish, or something?
> Some schools teach creationism. Some teach actual theology.
Not to mention that there have been PhDs issued for Magic - not stage magic, but the Merlin kind. As part of Anthropology, it makes as much sense as teaching inheritance practices among Bedouin or Tuaregs, or warring among the Dani of New Guinea. Clearly, studying how UFOs are seen, how their belief are propagated, etc., makes perfect sense. UFO Studies are also like Xenobiology or Cryptobiology (both taught at the graduate level, IIRC), in that they are fields of study that have yet to demonstrate that their objects of study really exist.
OTOH, teaching UFOs as actual things about which you can make true statements, rather than opinions. is clearly nonsense. The Blue alien with the ray gun is rather insistent that I make that perfectly clear.
Or because it is the species used in experiments, which are mined for data (bloated up to "wisdom" in the namers' mind).
> Anybody who really needs to know
(italics added)
For a snobbish redefinition of "really".
> As long as they're still known as fruit flies,
Regardless of what the zoologists name them, they will always be fruit flies to people with them in their kitchens, just as Buffalo Bill will not be renamed Bison Bill because the Plains Buffalo is "really" a bison, instead.
OTOH, the people who know them as Drosophila melanogaster probably could care less that they are common kitchen pests. Or, for zoologists who cook at home, that the things flying around the kitchen were Drosophila melanogaster as opposed to some related species, or even something of a related genus, when they are trying to get them out of their kitchens.
> Face it: We could never have 9 planets now. It would be 15 and rising (= a mess) or 8 forever.
What is wrong with 15 planets? There were a number of naming schemes already proposed for trans-Plutonic/trans-Neptunic planets out to at least 13 as far back as the 1960s. That there should be 8 forever, especially if something really big shows up out there, is more ridiculous. Perhaps we should rename Uranus and Neptune as Trans-Saturnic Objects and go back to the Ptolomeic list (sans Sun and Moon)?
I suppose you would have had problems with naming trans-Plutonium semi-stable nuclei as "elements" because 95 and rising is a mess, as well?
They did. The last aurochs (the most probable wild ancestor of domestic cattle) died during the Thirty Years War when the nobility's hunting preserves were overrun by various (hungry) armies.
Or as Orson Welles' Harry Lime put it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dv1QDlWbS8g/
Except that the Swiss didn't invent the Cuckoo Clock, nor make them in any numbers.
> but i have to wonder how much of their capacity goes unused even while they charge people
Obviously, just as much as they need to survive during the peak usage periods, or they would lower the price slightly and introduce new features to waste more MBs. Their purpose is to fool you into throwing money at them without wasting their time handling porn or coverage complaints, after all, not to leave your money in your investments (or pockets, at least).
> I think I covered everything.
You forgot that the only think standing in the way of the total triumph of (x :: x in {GNU/Linux|Linux|BeOS|etc}) is Apple's blocking of the critical path. Otherwise, (said x) would be challenging the Wintel monopoly, and destined to take the lead in but a year or two, as Steve Ballmer can only throw chairs and the sheeple would realize that they all were totally wrong in everything in question, and would convert en mass to (said x).
Or is that covered by your #8?
> Microsoft and Microsoft users were never even talked about this way.
No, worse. Microsoft hate was never at the "would be evil if only ..." stage, but started at "is evil" and went down from there.
OTOH, there were no latents covering their own sexual confusion fears by accusing Microsoft users of being homosexuals, instead, so maybe it balances out.
Because you cannot come up with a decent sequel idea (decent in the business sense, at least) to save your life? Seriously, that is almost the plot of each succeeding season of 24, so how difficult was that?
You forgot the letter, sent a week or so after the form, reminding you to fill out the form and send it in.
What is so un-steam punk about a simple Victorian ear trumpet?
Your example code is cute, except that the inheritance system is more like Common LISP (inheritance from an instance) rather than C++ (inheritance from a Platonic Ideal of the class). Please rewrite appropriately.
First, your link to the explanation of the X0 system is broken.
Second, I don't know for certain, but I think that the sex determination function is handled like Common Lisp inheritance (inherited from an instance, not an abstraction like a class definition, especially of a root class) rather than C++, Java, C#, etc. Evidently, said function was replaced in the mammalian line, just as color vision was (birds and reptiles have four primary colors, most mammals have only two, and pro-simians and primates have three (in general in all cases - at one company where I worked had about 1/4 male color-blindness).
Well, Google "Cordwainer Smith" and cat and it came up on top. The URL that I gave WAS what I had in my browser window.
To get a link to that story: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/29614/29614-h/29614-h.htm/
The Dark Sky Mystery to which OP refers is the question that why, if the Universe is infinite, is the night sky dark, since everywhere that one looks one should eventually run into a star, given a random distribution. It ignores the effect of dust absorbing light, that the Universe THAT WE CAN SEE is rather less than infinite (even if one assumes an infinite Universe), and that stars are not distributed randomly since most are in galaxies and galactic clusters (and thus end to clump together, instead of spread apart).
Nice steal from Niven's "Man Of Steel, Woman Of Kleenex" article. However, the answer is obviously to move LL (all Superman's girlfriends had those initials) to an area receiving light like that of a red sun, which reduces Kryptonians to human-like levels. And it doesn't have any bad effects, since Kryptonians evolved in that light; Kal-El himself was born there, for that matter.
> Any analogs to other trends?
The comics market has already collapsed at least once since I was in college (so long ago that Star Trek needed no TOS), and it will again.
And, of course, California real estate.
I think that you need to repost the last sentence, possibly with a link to what you are trying to refer. It looks like something was eaten by the system.
> (Although one could argue the military and government are the same thing.)
No, but it would be pretty hard to argue that the military is not a proper subset of the government.
However, in any case, since they have been exposed, the Secretary will disavow an knowledge of their actions. Good luck, Mister (Chinese equivalent of Briggs, Hand, or Phelps).
(cue Lalo Shifrin's theme)
> So I think that much of the targeted information is coming via credit-reporting agencies.
Obviously, you also do not respond to charities received in the mail. My family used to do this, occasionally, and my parents are still inundated, even though they stopped responding after my father retired, over a decade ago.